How To Market a Website Online

So your website is finally live and it looks amazing but you are sat there waiting for people to visit it, buy from it or ring you with an enquiry. And you are waiting and waiting.

Why aren't people coming to my website it is fantastic I hear you say!

I have been asked this question quite often believe it or not. I have also seen people spend many thousands of pounds on a website but then balk at the price an online marketing company will quote them for.

What would you prefer a fancy website that no one ever finds or a decent website that gets plenty of visitors?

Okay we would all go for a fancy website and plenty of traffic but you get what I mean.

Website Analytics

Once you start to get people visiting your website you need to know more about them. You need to find out things like how they found your website, where in the world they are, how long they stayed on your site etc. Tools such as Google Analytics or Lead Forensics lead generation tool will help hugely. Check out these experts review of Lead Forensics for more details about their lead generation tool.

Paid Advertising

The quickest but not always the most cost effective way of driving visitors to your website is to use a paid advertising service such as Google Adwords or Bing Adcentre. With these services you can be getting visitors within hours. The downside is that you pay each time someone clicks on your advert. If done well this is a great way of getting new business but you might be best hiring the services of someone that is trained and has experience of these services. For this you would look for a pay per click (ppc) management company. Usually a company offering ppc management will charge you a monthly fee on top of what you pay directly to the advertising company i.e. Google or Bing.

Search Engine Optimisation

Optimising your website is fairly simple depending on the platform your website has been designed on and what access you have to it. If your website has been designed using WordPress and you have full access then performing the basic search engine optimisation (SEO) tasks is quite straightforward. Make sure when you research which keywords to target that you start with the least competitive, for example we started with SEO Barnsley and now go after more competitive keywords such as affordable SEO.

Content Marketing

This sounds technical and complicated however it is really quite simple albeit time consuming. Content Marketing involves adding a blog or something similar like a news section to your website and regularly adding interesting unique articles to your website. We recommend that you add something new at least once per week but more frequently if you can and especially if your company operates in a competitive market. You should also consider trying to get articles published on other blogs or websites to get your name out there. If you don't have the time to do your own content marketing then make sure you use a reputable content marketing company that you know can produce good quality content otherwise you could get a telling off from Google!

Social Media

Getting started with social media marketing can be so daunting especially if you haven't been brought up in the digital era. There is Google+, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Pinterest, shall I go on? Where do you start? If you find it too much to handle by yourself consider hiring a digital marketing agency to run you a professional social media marketing campaign. The advice I would give is think about the service or products you are offering and initially just sign up to the ones you think will be best suited to your target audience. Next add social buttons to your website or blog. If you are using WordPress this is easily done by installing a plugin to do this for you. One that we use is the Digg Digg plugin which gives people all the share or like buttons they need to pass on your interesting articles to their friends and colleagues.

Email Marketing

This is something you need to build up over time. You can go out and but lists but in my experience building your own list where someone has signed up to either a newsletter or product that you have offered is far better.

Summary

My advice would be that if you have a budget for online marketing then let a professional do it. Obviously check out their credentials but if they have got the experience then they should be able to give you a good return on your investment. If there isn't a budget for online marketing then have a go yourself but please read online marketing mistakes to avoid before you get started.

We've been with Lojix for about 2 years. They were recommended by our web developer and he was not wrong. Having joined the Lojix team we found ourselves very quickly on Google page 1 with both Google Shop and Google Ads for just about every product we sell (over 300), and for by far the majority of our products we also feature organically on page 1 or 2 - that's even more satisfying and clearly demonstrates the sound advice and support they're able to provide website administrators. As a consequence our sales have rocketed. Lojix have a very understated approach i.e. they are not the flashy, pushy, irritating sort of SEO organisation that pester businesses every day, promising the earth but usually delivering nothing. No. Lojix just get on with the job, quietly and professionally, responding quickly to any product adjustments required or to the need to adjust bids on Ads. etc. We would wholeheartedly recommend Lojix to any business looking for an organisation that can actually deliver, and deliver without compromising your profit!